Wednesday, 5 January 2011

chinese stealth fighter

China is still a long way from being able to fly a stealth aircraft, despite the images that are surfacing that they have a working prototype, a US Navy Official said on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal published images of what it said appeared to display a Chinese J-20 stealth fighter prototype in proces of making high speed taxi test.

Asked when China would be able to field the jet, Vice Admiral David Dorsett, director of naval intelligence, said it would be years. Dorsett told reporters the published photos left a lot of questions unanswered. "In terms of the stealth photos, the IOC (initial operational capability) on the stealth aircraft, it's still not clear to me when it's going to become operational," he said. "Developing a stealth capability with a prototype and then integrating that into a combat environment is going to take some time," he said.

So the Chinese technology hasn't developed enough with this aircraft for it to be launched just yet.